The Reluctant Apprentice
by Ness Frost
Summary: Onni doesn't think the language barrier is causing him any problems he can't deal with on his own. There's someone else who thinks otherwise.


In a lot of ways, Onni supposed he should count himself lucky. After all, Mora was a fairly large city, and almost everyone spoke Icelandic.

…now if only his own skills in the language weren't so rusty.

As long as he stuck with the Västerströms, things were… okay. Not _great_ , but okay. The adults knew to speak slowly and clearly around him and he didn't much care what the kids were saying anyway; he generally got the gist of it. If there was anything he needed to know in more detail, Taru would translate it for him.

It was when he was going out that he had the most trouble. When he went into a shop or restaurant, even if the merchant in question did speak Icelandic (and not all of them did, especially in the more menial occupations), they didn't know to speak slowly or clearly, and more often than not Onni would be stuck pantomiming and pointing and nodding along without even being sure what he was agreeing to.

 _Most_ of the time, he managed to get his meaning across—or at least to endure nothing worse than having to ask someone else. Then, there were the times like this, when the coat he _thought_ he'd been ordering turned out to be a frilly pink dress when he opened the package the merchant had wrapped it in.

"That's a good color on you," Trond commented as he wrapped it back up with a sigh.

"It was a mistake." He'd have to return it tomorrow—for all the success he'd have conveying _that_ request.

Of course, language problems _really_ didn't help with the grunt work that Taru had promised him. The Icelandic courses that Onni had taken had covered most of the basics, but there were still a few key vocabulary words he had either forgotten or never learned at all—how to ask for something like another antenna for the radio, or nuts and bolts? He usually ended up bringing along a sample of what the Västerströms wanted so he wouldn't have to talk to anyone at all.

As trying as things were, though, somehow Trond coming along with him only made it _worse_.

At the market, Onni didn't speak anymore, only pointed to whatever he wanted and held up the appropriate number of fingers if necessary. Except…

"Han vil ha _fem fisker_ ," Trond said, looking over his shoulder, taking care to enunciate the last two words very slowly and clearly. Onni glared. Trond ignored him. From then on, it became a regular habit.

" _Brunt_ eller _gr_ _å_ _tt_ , ikke _rosa_."

"Han trenger _st_ _ø_ _vler_." He tapped his chin. "Og _hansker_."

"Would you _stop_ that?" Onni demanded as they walked home from the shop.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Trond replied with a completely straight face.

Grudgingly, Onni admitted that his _frakk_ and his _st_ _ø_ _vler_ and his _hansker_ were exactly what he'd come to the stop to get, and that they were neither frilly nor pink. Still, though, if it meant having Trond constantly treat him like a baby—!

"I am doing no such thing." He flipped the page of his newspaper. "Of course, if you _want_ to keep crawling around blindly rather than get up and walk, that's entirely up to you."

…he still wasn't going to start taking Norwegian lessons. He _wasn't_. He was in _Sweden_ ; what he needed were lessons in how to speak _Swedish_. There ought to be _something_ around here he could take advantage of.

"I _think_ the university has a class for non-native speakers," Siv muttered distractedly when he asked. "It's 900 kroner to apply. Plus they're close to the end of the semester, so you'd be so far behind on the basics…"

"I was asking for a friend!" Onni blustered before she could say anything more.

"What is the word for this?" He held the object up in front of Trond, his eyes averted and his free hand balled defensively at his side. Trond raised an eyebrow. "That would be _en sok_. Though I presume that what you want is _et par sokker_."

"Great. Now give me a pen so I can write that down."

"Sorry, don't have one." He wasn't even looking at Onni as he filled out the crossword.

Onni ended up repeating " _et par sokker_ " to himself all the way down to the shop—and then all the way back, because he'd repeated it so many times already that it now refused to stop going through his head.

"Oh, är du Nordmann?" a startled teller asked him after he'd finished paying for the groceries with little more than a grunt, only to realize he'd have to tell her she'd given him the incorrect amount of change.

"Nei," he answered, before picking up his bags and leaving. Only when he was halfway back to the Västerströms' house did he realize that the language he'd automatically defaulted to was _not_ Icelandic.

"When will you learn to take no for an answer?" he sighed when Trond answered one of his questions in Norwegian—never mind that Onni had pointedly asked in _Icelandic_.

"I'm used to teaching stubborn kids who don't want to learn," Trond replied with a smirk. Onni snarled back.

Though even Onni had to admit, Norwegian did have _some_ benefits. He could now go out of the house if he needed to, without being accompanied by another person—and he no longer pulled his hood over his eyes and gave his best glare whenever anyone so much as _looked_ in his direction. Not to mention, babysitting suddenly got a lot easier when the brats could no longer to pretend they didn't understand you when you told them it was time to go to bed.

Of course, the _brats_ had something entirely different to say about the situation.

The first the Västerströms learned of the latest Incident (no, not the one with the ear; that was only the first of many) was when Onni staggered into the main part of the house, drenched in water and with his hair coated in something that looked and smelled remarkably like pine sap, letting loose a constant stream of curse words—and not in Finnish or Icelandic.

While Torbjörn and Siv rushed to get their children in hand and Taru attempted to do the same with Onni, Trond only smirked behind his newspaper.

"My work here is done."

* * *

 **A/N:** Here, have some more Spawn of the Comments Section.


End file.
